Ok, soon my system will have 2 maxtor (pata) and 1 wd raptor (sata...obviously)...sooo I was planning on using the WD Raptor as OS and Progs, and setting up Raid 0 accross the 2 maxtors for basically all other data storage...would this be wise? does anybody have any specific advice?

My primary goal is to get the maximum speed possible, in loading games, opening files etc.. so a recommended blocksize for the 2 considering it will be quite a varied store (files ranging from 70k to 800 meg) would be appreciated.

Also, are there any additional setup notes anyone would mention about the raptor to ensure I get max performance out of it? (its running on a gigabyte mobo with nforce2) such as specific drivers, a certain bios option or something...

thanks for reading this post and even more thanks for any words of wisdom from the guru's

Raid 0 is unsuitable for keeping your important data. Raid 0 is done for speed, and to combine multiple disks into one logical storage device. But if one drive fails, you will loose the lot. Your data is therefore 2x more likely to get lost now.

If you want to protect important data, use RAID 1. But this will have the effect of halfing the available disk space, because one drive will be a copy of the other. ( If you want security and combined space and extra speed, you need RAID 5 which you will need a dedicated card and 3 drives for anyway. )

So, you really have to decide what you want to use the RAID volume for, first. If its for temp space to download movies onto, rip DVDs and CDs (did I just say that>!?_) burn them and then delete it, then I'd say go for RAID 0.

If, however, you want a place to store all those mp3s, data, stuff on your system you could not live without, DON'T stick that on a RAID 0. Even a single disk would probably be better than that. Do a RAID 1 in this case.

As far as installing your OS on one, dedicated hard drive, this is an ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT idea, and one that I have used for more than 5 years now. Its tried and tested and true.

I also welcome your interest in having multiple hard drives on your system, which is truly the way forward. I have a 4 hard drive system that I am upgrading to an 8 at some point (will have RAID 1 and RAID 5), and also have a system that has 3 HDDs in a RAID 0 config for short term storage.